Volume 12, Issue 1

This paper deals with the physics of Anaximander and argues that, in his theory, the drying up of the sea cannot be accounted for in terms of the kind of conflict envisaged in his main fragment between the four basic substances: the hot, the cold, the wet and the dry ( DK 12B1). In so doing, the paper takes issue with a classic interpretation of Anaximander’s cosmology advocated by Jaap Mansfeld (2011). This issue also brings us to a wider philosophical problem: are meteorological phenomena in general amenable to this conflict according to Anaximander? In the conclusion, a few conjectural remarks are made regarding what may have been the real explanandum of this theory.

My aim in this paper is to show that Plato’s Phaedo makes an important contribution to the development of ideas about the commensuration in value of heterogeneous items that is needed for practical reasoning and rational choice. Because the passage I focus on, the so-called ‘right exchange’ passage at 69 a-c , has not usually been read this way, I motivate the reading by showing how it resolves some puzzles local to the Phaedo concerning the stark contrast Socrates develops between the virtues of philosophers and nonphilosophers, ordinary people who do not pursue wisdom single-mindedly, applying to the latter labels like ‘strange’, ‘unreasonable’, ‘illusory’ and ‘slavish’. Socrates says that one should, and suggests that philosophers do, use wisdom as their currency whereas nonphilosophers use pleasure (and perhaps also pains, fears, etc., or bodily conditions in general) as their currency (or currencies). Although it has been generally understood that the basis for this contrast lies in how the two groups evaluate, the details have remained murky. I argue that it’s due to the properties of pleasure (or bodily conditions in general) qua measure of value, in particular pleasure’s context-dependence, that nonphilosophers’ judgements about virtue, e.g. the courage and moderation of particular acts or people, are defective in the ways Socrates says they are.

In the Parmenides Plato claims that by relinquishing Forms one would entirely destroy tên tou dialegesthai dunamin . I argue that this peculiar phrase does not indicate, as often suggested, the power or possibility of all discourse or thought, but the power of dialectic, i. e. the highest science; and that its preservation is, for Plato, a decisive reason for the necessity of the Forms.

With regard to Aristotle’s discussion of chance and fortune in Phys . II.5–6, interpreters maintain that, after having provided a specific definition of fortune, applicable to intentional chance processes, in ch. 5, Aristotle is, in ch. 6, seeking to identify a specific meaning of αὐτόματον, which exclusively applies to strictly natural chance processes. When understood in such terms, however, ch. 6 turns out to be problematic, insofar as the examples Aristotle uses to illustrate αὐτόματον refer to mixed natural and intentional chance processes. To show that ch. 6 is internally consistent, I will argue that Aristotle’s goal simply is to emphasise the generic quality of the notion of αὐτόματον compared to that of τύχη and that the examples are chiefly geared towards this aim. I will also explain why such a treatment of chance is relevant within his critical analysis of Empedocles’ and Democritus’ theories of τύχη and αὐτόματον.

Aristotle is believed to have introduced the focal meaning of friendship in Eudemian Ethics  VII.2 and then to have formulated it more generally in Metaphysics Γ.2. Bonitz’s unjustifiable emendation of the text underscores these interpretations. This paper therefore reads the MSS and supposes that the EE passage introduces a wider focal meaning based on the theory presented in the Categories , one that does not imply referential relationships between the primary and secondary terms. This wider focal meaning can help explain disputed terms in practical philosophy, such as “friendship” and “like-mindedness,” without invoking the Form of the Good.